Establishing a learning lab for innovative learning and working in multi-user virtual reality

The planned establishment of a Learning LabVR at the Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences (THI), which will be subsidised with 100,000 euros, is intended to pilot how innovative learning with VR support can be designed at the university.

Under the co-project management of Prof. Dr. Andreas Riener (Research Chair for Human Machine Interface and Virtual Reality) and Prof. Dr. Munir Georges (Research Chair for Language and Text Comprehension), a testing and experience space for the development of hybrid learning and collaboration applications through multi-person VR is to be created. Among other things, it is planned to set up pilot Virtual Reality-Based Learning Environments (VRLE) for selected STEM content.

"The project is intended to contribute to aligning the THI's teaching and learning forms even more stringently with competences that students will need in the working world of the future," explains Vice-President Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Hof, who will be responsible for the project in the university management.

President Prof. Dr. Walter Schober is excited about this opportunity: "The funding will enable us to further strengthen our AI-supported individualised teaching and learning through multi-person VR and to (re)establish the university as a central, hybrid learning, interaction and meeting place of the future after the lockdown."

The project will start on 1 July and run until the end of 2023. In addition to the financial support for the establishment of the THI Learning LabVR, the THI is part of an accompanying nationwide network in which solutions for learning spaces of the future are being jointly developed.

About the funding initiative:

With the funding initiative "Raumlabore", the Stifterverband and the Dieter Schwarz Stiftung support and accompany the establishment and further development of physical learning spaces as well as the evaluation of new learning space concepts. The programme enables higher education institutions to redesign an available space in the university to implement a space laboratory in the sense of the learning architecture concept and to experiment with teaching and learning formats in it.

In addition to the THI, four other higher education institutions and their concepts prevailed with the jury, which is made up of representatives from science and business:

• Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz: Ancient Sciences Innovation Lab (ASIL)
• Leuphana Universität Lüneburg: Transformations – Räume für zukunftsorientiertes Lernen
• Technische Universität Berlin in Kooperation mit Universität der Künste Berlin: UNIversalräume – Dynamische Systeme in Lehr- und Lernraumarchitekturen
• Universität zu Lübeck: FLEXLAB